


Humanity's Strongest Soldier

by hajimetooru_ittetsu



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:07:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26125504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hajimetooru_ittetsu/pseuds/hajimetooru_ittetsu
Summary: After all, Humanity’s Strongest Soldier isstillonly human, and one way or another, humansbreak.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 25





	Humanity's Strongest Soldier

Petra watches him out of the corner of her eye. The captain is disembarking from his horse carefully, an almost unnoticeable limp slowing him down. She doesn’t offer her help because she knows he would refuse.

The captain is a strange man. The people see him as their saviour, an invulnerable hero who will single-handedly save humanity from extinction. Humanity’s Strongest Soldier, they call him. She once saw him that way too. She used to watch from the sidelines, a starry-eyed child with too much hope burning in her chest, for the glorious victory of the soldiers from war. She remembers the blank looks on their faces, the haunted hollowness in their eyes, the sag in their shoulders, as if an invisible weight was pressing down on them. But she paid them no heed. Her eyes were fixed on the captain. He leads with dignity and pride, powerful even in the chaos of war, a pillar of strength and support for his soldiers. He holds his head high and takes his enemies down five at a time, exuding authority and grace. He rides on his horse, impassive even in the face of danger and death. He is Humanity’s Strongest Soldier.

He inspired her, and he’s the reason she enlisted in the military. Five years of hard work had finally gotten her into his squad. She was extremely happy to have been chosen to be in such an elite squad, not to mention the fact that she could observe him from up close. 

At first, Petra didn’t know what to make of him. The captain is not at all like what everyone else sees, nor is he anything like how she envisioned him to be. For one, he’s surprisingly short, with a temper as short as his height and a penchant for violence. He is extremely strict and harsh, not to mention the fact that his language is especially crude. Rumour has it that this is a result of a poverty-ridden upbringing. He is an obsessive clean freak who can’t stand the presence of even a speck of dust within his sights. He trains them harder than they’ve ever been trained before, making her trainee days seem like a walk in the park in comparison. He demands nothing short of perfection from them.

But as she watches the captain leading his horse to the barn, trying to hide the limp in his stride, she realizes. The captain is unexpectedly kind. After all, she was there when he suffered an injury trying to save a fellow soldier from the jaws of death. She was there when the soldier’s life slipped through his very fingers at the last possible second. She was there when he knelt beside the dying soldier, when he clasped the soldier’s bloodstained hand, when he whispered words of comfort in the last moments of the man’s life. She was there to see the peaceful expression on the dead man’s face and the man’s blood still stained on the neurotically cleanly captain’s hand.

“Petra.” She jerks, startled, and turns her head to face the captain. He looks tired, the lines on his face more pronounced, face haggard and wan. His right hand is still stained red. Taking in his hunched shoulders, Petra wonders, not for the first time, if his shoulders feel heavy, if the burden of the thousands of lives lost is weighing too heavily down on him. If there will ever come a day when the weight becomes too heavy for him to bear.

“Heichou?”

He regards her with his gunmetal eyes, still sharp and shrewd despite the exhaustion in them. “Good job today. You did well.”

The captain might come across as cold and indifferent, unshakeable and incapable of human feelings, but she knows better. She’s seen him grieve, she’s seen him mourn. He feels just as strongly as the rest of them do, if not even more. He’s learned to hide his pain behind a mask, because he’s seen a thousand deaths too many—friends, colleagues, comrades, family—and how else can he cope without breaking? 

He pushes them hard and trains them even harder because that is the only way he can ensure their survival.

“Thank you, Heichou!” she salutes. “Please get some rest!” she adds quickly, before hurriedly taking her leave.

He’s impassive, but not unfeeling; strong, but not unbreakable; powerful, but not invulnerable.

After all, Humanity’s Strongest Soldier is _still_ only human, and one way or another, humans _break_.


End file.
